AutoCAD Tips: Questions
Posted By Mike Williams on February 7, 2009
AutoCAD Tips: QuestionsPlease post your AutoCAD questions or submit a request for a future tip here. Feel free to comment on other subscribers questions as well.
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Mike
About the author
Mike Williams
Michael E. Williams has been using AutoCAD since Release 2.1. He's been providing AutoCAD drafting, training and consulting to the Architectural, Industrial, and Engineering communities for over 20 years. Mike has trained entire drafting departments of a Fortune 500 companies and held classes and seminars for Architects, Engineers and Contractors. He's taken people with zero experience, training or knowledge of drafting, architecture or CAD and turned them into highly productive and knowledgeable drafting professionals. As owner and operator of Michael E. Williams Computer Graphics, he has personally drafted on thousands of projects for hundreds of clients. The tips and tricks he teaches come from personal experience and a pursuit of efficiency and productivity in a production environment. Mike lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana with his wife Tanya and their three girls (Alex, Kate and Eden).Comments
60 Responses to “AutoCAD Tips: Questions”
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Here’s a question from Laura in South Carolina:
Mike,
I use AutoCAD 2005. In an earlier version of AutoCAD while hatching I was able to choose the location I wanted the hatch to start. This was especially nice when I was hatching brick. I could choose my area to hatch then pick a corner for it to start – that way I was always in coursing. I cannot find that command in my 2005 version, the boys in my office use 2006 – I can’t find it on their machines either. Do you possible know what this command is?
Thanks,
Laura
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Laura,
There’s a few ways to set the base point of your hatch. First, if you select the hatch and right-click, do you have an option that says “Set Origin”? I”m not sure in which release that option was added.
If not, in older version of AutoCAD, I used to reset the BASE of the drawing to get the hatch to go where I wanted. Type BASE, then pick the lower right corner of the object you are hatching, then HATCH the object. You may have to experiment with the BASE location to get the desired results. Let me know if it works.
I think once they added the “Set Origin” option, this trick quit working.
Mike
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Mike,
I am a retired drafter working part time out of my home office and recently discovered your
column. I particularly like and appreciate the 0 fillet tip. I use this command quite frequently and was as you stated wasting considerable tim by re-setting rad. to “0″. I am now using
shift and saving time.
I have a question in regard to “User Preference” . In the display sect.
a user can set the background color to Black or White. I originally used Black and in fact the
offices that I worked in, all the users used Black. But since retiring and setting up my own office and experimenting with both, I settled on White. This appeared to me to reflect exactly
the appearance of the printed dwg. Since I am out of touch with current Engineering offices,
I have no idea if my “preference” is considered “odd ball”. Also, more importantly, does it
inconvenience other users in other offices when they open my dwg. and need to plot? As I
see it each preference has it’s disadvantages in respect to colors. Blue is difficult for me to see on a black background and yellow is difficult to see on a white background. Do you have a preference and what do you consider the most popular choice?
Anthony J.Marinelli
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 12th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Hey Anthony,
Background colors are very much a user preference thing. I personally use black in model space (old school) but use white in paper space (I like the WYSIWYG look). Like you mentioned, yellow is the most difficult color to read, but it is only a problem for objects actually drawn in the layout tab, since I can go into Model space to edit anything there (with the black background). Make sure your Page Setup Manager has “Display plot styles” clicked on, so it truly looks like it will plot.
Mike
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I have a question for you Mike. Are you familiar with Inventor 2009? Where I work we have now purchased Autocad Mechanical 2009 and Inventor 2009. I can’t decide if I should draft using inventor or autocad.
Here are reasons I would like to use autocad. I love the publish command. I use it all the time to print dozens of drawings at a time. Some of our drawings are Ansi A and Ansi B as well as Arch C and Arch D sizes. I like how each layout points to a specific printer or plotter. I can even set up the publish command to print them all as a sized skeches. I use the printer for A and B sizes and the plotter for C and D sizes. Plus some drawings have more than one layout. Plus the inventor multi-sheet program doesn’t allow to use different printers that I know of.
Here are reasons I would like to use inventor. I don’t like having to translate the geometry out of inventor to paste in autocad. Nor am I crazy about the way autocad handles the inventor link. I believe(but am unsure) that I will be able to copy entire projects(including drawings) using the vault and then make similar projects out of the copies.
So much technology… so confusing…
Thanks Mike
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 12th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Hey Ben,
I’m sorry, but I’ve never used Invertor so I can’t help you very much. I hope some other subscribers will read this and give you some input. Have you checked to see if the 2010 version of each of these may help you make your decision?
Mike
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Mike,
I am plotting furniture construction on 24×36 pages. My viewports range from 1″=1′ to 6″=1′. The text and dims are giving me such a hard time. I’ve looked in Help thru cad and tried to fiddled with annotative dims but I am having no luck with that. I am wasting too much time and my boss is getting irritated with me. I know there’s a simple solution to my problem yet I can’t seem to find it on my own. PLEASE HELP!!
Michele May
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 12th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Hey Michele,
There are a few ways to handle dimensioning with different viewports. The latest being annotative dimensioning. If you set a dimension style to be annotative, it will adjust for the scale of your viewport. The place many people get stuck is they put a dimensions, but when they go to the MVIEW in their Layout Tab, the dimension is not there. A quick way to fix this is to set ANNOALLVISIBLE = 1. This allows you to see all your dimension in the viewport. Once you see them, you can select them, right click, select “Annotative Object Scale” and then “add current scale”. There, of course, is alot more to annotative dimensioning, but hopfully that will get you going.
The other way is to setup different layers or you text and dimensioning for each scale. If you had a viewport that was 1/4″ and another that was 1/8″ you could setup a layer called Dimension48 and one called Dimension96. Then you dimension each one at the correct scale and freeze the Dimension96 layer in the 1/4″ Viewport and vice versa.
Let me know if this helps.
Mike
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Here’s one I received from Emanuel:
Hey, Mike every tip you gave me helped me out but my biggest problem is the plotting end of it. I can do all the plotting and everything easy enough but if my boss comes in here and tries to plot something than he just gets confused. I’ve tried pretty much every trick in the book but haven’t been able to figure out yet how to make so when we get on the dialogue box to plot we just have to stay in that dialogue box and not go to the custom properties dialogue box. I even tried to set our CanoniPF700 as default printer for this computer and then change the default settingsand that still didn’t work and talk about wasting paper to try to figure it out.WOW. Have any tips or ideas to help out. Thanks Emanuel
Emanuel,
There are two things you need to do to save your custom properties setting.
1. Once you set them the way you want, it will ask if you want to “Create a temporary PC3 file to apply to this polot only” or “save changes to the following file…” Make sure you save your changes and look to see what file it saves to. It should have a PC3 extension
2. When you plot, pick the one with the PC3 extension as the name of your plotter.
for example, if your plotter is named CanoniPF700, you will see an icon that looks like a printer towards the top of you list of printers. after you save the PC3 file, you will notice one that is farther down called CanoniPF700.PC3 and it will have a plotter icon. Select that one and everything should work out fine.
Mike
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Hello Mike,
How do you default the Audit prompt to [Y] yes, when auditing a drawing?
I hate to type [Y] all the time.
Thank you and have a great day !!
cesar
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Mike Williams Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 7:50 am
I don’t know of a way to stop this prompt with a system variable.
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Mike,
I’ve tried that but it seems somewhere its telling it to print out a portriat instead of a landscape the way that i have it set up. The only way it will print out with a landscape print is if I go into my Costum Properties through the plot dialouge box and go to the layout tab and change something in there and Just apply changes to the current file. I tried saving to a pc3 file but that didn’t do anything. It still printed out a portrait.
Emanuel
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Go to Windows Control Panel and modify your settings for you plotter in the windows driver and see if that works.
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Mike,
I use AutoCAD 2009 .Something strange going on .While I do zooming (in /out ) – my ray or construction lines jumping ,or changing angles ,osnap points sometimes far away from original position. They virtually still in positions where they drawn ( you can find them -when selecting or when they active ,but visually they aren`t here). And this problem basically when lines not in straight angle. Before I used Auto Cad 2006 ,2001 and everything was OK.
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 7:06 am
This sounds like a video card issue. Have you checked to see if you are using the latest driver?
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Is there an easier way to create an elevation of a curved object than doing math problems. For example a curved seatwall or walkway you are detailing?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
You can draw a simple 3D version and create the 2D view from that, or line up your plans and project the lines down.
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I have recently purchased Autocad LT 2009 and am sitting my first tranche of C&G exams over the next couple of weeks (that’s a UK qualification!!). Still familiarising myself with everything, but wondered if there is a built in library of 2D furniture footprints, standard door and window cross sections, etc in my Autocad set up? If there is, please could you tell me how to access and use this?
If not, could someone recommend a download – preferably free, which will enable me to import furniture drawings into my cad drawings?
Many thanks.
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Deborah,
I’m not sure what comes with AutoCAD LT. I use AutoCAD Architecture and it has some built-in libraries, but I doubt the same thing is in LT. I don’t even think it’s in regular AutoCAD.
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Is there a way to change text color or vector color inside a block without using block editor or exploding the blocks? Sometimes multiple blocks of the same item are used by the architect and we generally assign the architect’s model a light color like 15 or 243 and then do our work over the top in a bolder color (heavier line weight) to make our work stand out. When the itch becomes an irritation is when there are 45 doors or windows that are 35 different blocks. It becomes very time consuming to change all of them and then if the architect changes the layout and sends us a new model, we have to do it all over again. Any ideas?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Ed,
If you are using version 2008 or 2009, there is a command called SETBYLAYER that will force a block’s properties to be Bylayer. Then you can change the layer color.
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EXCELLENT! ! ! This will save tons of time. Thank you VERY much!
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I am working in autocad 2008 and I am having some linetype issues. in paperspace some lines show correctly but the fence line is showing large and it looks like a bunch of breaklines spaced on top of eachother. but when I go to model space everything is showing the way it is supposed to. its a site plan so the linetype scale is 120. So if i change the linetype scale to 1 then all of my lines turn to solid lines. I dont know how to fix this problem. I am usually one to try and figure it out without help but i cant seem to figure this one out.
thanks
Andrew Nelson
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 18th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
see if this fixes your problem: http://autocadtipoftheday.com/tipblog/?p=105
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Using AutoCAD Architecture 2008 – on the quickcalc using the distance between two points. Is there anyway that I change it reads in feet and inches rather than just inches?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 19th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Just put an ” mark (inch mark) after the number it returns and press enter and it will return the number in feet and inches (assuming that’s what your units are set to).
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Hi Mike,
I’m having problems with my text, dim style and leaders. When I go to set my arrow size I can only go from 0.18 to 0.6, with any other value the arrowhead disappears. I’ll set the text and dim size to a pretty good size, but when I print, everything prints so small. I’m using autocad 2009LT.
Thanks
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 20th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Hey Sabrina,
Is your dimscale set correctly?
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Sabrina Reply:
March 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am
My Dimscale is at 1. I’m not sure what it’s suppose to be at, but I put it to zero and still had the same problem. Then I set it back to 1.
Either way at one or at zero, and it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s in the properties or in the multileader style box. I only get from .18 to a max of 2.
Right now I’ve just been exploding the leader and scaling it, but that is kind of a pain in the butt.
Thanks
Reply
Mike Williams Reply:
March 24th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Your dimscale should be the sale of the drawing. For example, if your detail is going to be setup to plot at 1/4″ = 1′, then your dimscale would be set to 48. Assuming the dimensions are in modelspace.
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In my drawings I use a scale of 1″= 100′. If I draw a polyline to represent 20,000′ and the line may have arcs or curves in it and I need to set a match line every 1500′, What is the command to measure this distance from the beginning of the line and set the match lines at these increments?
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Hey Glenn,
You can use the measure command and have it insert a block (the match line) every 1500′
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Mike,
Thank you very much for you help. I usually don’t have to scale my drawings, so that was a nice refresher.
Thanks again
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Mike,
I have been trying to download Google Earth Image and Surface into Civil 3D 2009. The download will process quickly up to 49%, then take about an 1½ hours to complete the download with no Z elevation. Another time I did the same procedure on my laptop, when it finally finished, the Z elevations were way off, by over 1,000 feet. I have my coordinate system set properly for the location. Any ideas?
John
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Mike, it is ruff to ‘upgrade’ from R12 in a week.
Something happened to the .ctb plot config file in my drawing.
I see my ’standard.ctb’ in
tools/options/plot+publish/plot style tables
but when I plot I have only .stb options. They make washed-out gray prints.
UNACCEPTABLE. I want my color pen linewidth assignments. How do I
restore them?
Sorry this .reply. box turns into another problem. I apprec your work.
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Mike Williams Reply:
April 5th, 2009 at 7:04 am
You need to give the CONVERTPSTYLES command to switch between STB to CTB. Autodesk wants to move to the STB plot styles, but most of the die-hard AutoCAD users are still using CTB.
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Hi Mike,
Thanks so much for the great site and the helpful emails! Its been great finding out the answers to so many stubborn CAD questions!
One problem I’ve always come across has to do with xrefing in titleblocks. There always seem to be issues with where the 0,0,0 point occurs relative to the page-size.
Do you have any general tips on how to set this up? (ie, should a lot of it be handle in the page setup? is there a proper way to ’snap’ to the corner of the page, and is it a terribly bad idea to have one xref file with all 6 of our titlesheets on it [we have an 8.5x11, 11x17, ArchD, etc, all on one file, so when in paper space you see all of the on either side of the page outline]).
Many thanks!
luke
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Mike Williams Reply:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
I’m not exactly sure if i understand exactly what you are asking. I think what you are refering to as 0,0 relative to the page size may be the base point (or insertion point) of the block. When you define a block and you pick it’s base point, that is the point you will drag it in by. If the block is drawn to where the corner of the border is drawn at 0,0, then when you insert it, and enter to place it at 0,0, it will insert there. If all your titleblocks were defined the same way, they would all drop into place correctly.
I hope that helped more than it confused,
Mike
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Mike:
I have always heard “if it is to good to be true, it probabley is” This tip of the day is truley a great thing. I have been working CAD for a long long time and I find it hard to get things done sometimes this is true only because I find myself always working alone with no one to ask or bounce things off of. I do thank you for this outlet.
I have a question I have never been able to figure out for one reason or another when working on drawings from others who might not have scales set up right might have text and dimensions all over the drawing at different sizes. It takes me forever to get the drawing sheet looking in good shape. Is there a way i can do this without going to each entry one by one?
Again thank you for the help your are giving many including mtself.
Larry
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Mike Williams Reply:
April 21st, 2009 at 7:41 pm
You can set your dimescale to be correct and do a dimesion update. In newer versions, you can use annotative dimensioning to make them automatically scale for different scales. For the dimensions, you can select all the text (or all the objects and then filter out just the text) and set the size you want. You will probably have to still do some cleanup though. This is a perfect example of why everyone should develop and enforce office standards.
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Hi Mike,
I remember in an earlier version of cad (2006) that there was a fill effects option for your solid hatch. Does 2009LT have anything like that?
Thanks
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Mike Williams Reply:
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am
I’m not sure about AutoCAD LT. Maybe someone reading will know. I regular AutoCAD the solid hatch is still there. You can always do a line hatch that has a tighter spacing than the line width and it will look solid when plotted
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What is the cost to purchase AutoCad full version or Lite in the latest version?
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Mike Williams Reply:
May 12th, 2009 at 5:47 am
You can go to http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=8314527&siteID=123112 to see pricing. There are two ways to purchase the full version. One is through a dealer and the other is from the website. It’s usually cheaper to purchase through a dealer. According to the website, AutoCAD full is around $4,500 and LT is around $1,400.
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HI MIKE,
I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE YOUR TIPS! I HAVE WORKED WITH SOME OF YOUR DRAFTERS BEFORE, SINCE I USED TO WORK AT ADG IN LAFAYETTE, LA. I BELIEVE I HAVE EVEN SPOKEN TO YOU BEFORE.
I AM NOW A CAD TEACHER AT SOUTH WEST LOUISIANA COMMUNITY COLLEGE. THE SCHOOL IS GOING TO AUTOCAD 2010. I DOWLOADED AN EDUCATIONAL VERSION TO GET AHEAD OF THE CURVE.
HAVE YOU USED IT YET?
I LIKED IN 2009 HOW YOU SHOWED HOW TO GET YOUR MENUS & TOOLBARS BACK, BUT IT DOESN’T SEEM TO WORK THAT WAY IN 2010. DO YOU KNOW OF A WAY TO DO THIS VERY SAME THING IN 2010?
I LIKE CERTAIN FEATURES OF THE RIBBON, ESPECIALLY THE RECORDER, BUT FEEL THAT IF MY STUDENTS WERE TO GET A JOB, THE COMPANIES WOULD PROBABLY BE SET UP IN CLASSIC AUTOCAD, SO I INITIALLY START THEM ALL IN AUTOCAD CLASSIC MODE. IT’S KIND OF LIKE LEARNING TO DRIVE A STANDARD SHIFT, AFTER THAT THEN YOU CAN DRIVE ALMOST ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY AUTOMATIC.
ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED,
AMY LANDRY
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I have drawn my block libraries in imperial units and i am now having to scale to metric units.
so if i have a block set up for 10 scale decimal and want to convert it to 1:100 metric what is the scale factor to insert block in model space for metric.
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I’m working on a 2D drawing usind AutoCAD 2009 and for some reason, when I draw a line, it’s in 3D. How did I get a Z dimension on my line and how do I get rid of it. It’s using alot of extra time going back and changing the z dimension to zero so that I can radius my corners. Otherwise I get “lines are non coplanar”. Frustrating!! Any ideas? Thanks for all that you do.
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The last tip I got was about the Chspace command. Problem is, I am importing files from another software and all of my text shows up only in the layout tab. All of my users are running Acad LT 2004 or earlier. I want to mimic this chspace command in old versions of LT. I suppose you could use the copybase and pasteclip to move the objects but what would you use to collect the Scale from a layout?
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Mike Williams Reply:
September 14th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Correct. You would need to paste the text into model space at the scale factor that you want to plot. For example, if the scale is 1/4″=1′-0′”, you would need to paste them at a scale of 48.
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Michael Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Mike, Thank you for your reply. My hope was to be able to automate this process in a button that would do this for the user. While I personally could look at my border or my properties and figure out what scale the layout drawing is, I wondered if this is saved in a variable specific to each layout that I could collect via my button so that without asking the user, the text could automatically be scaled up before dumping out to model space.
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Mike Williams Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 8:40 am
I think you are going to be limited to what you can do since you are using AutoCAD LT. In the full verison you can create custom commands thru LSP and Visual Basic.
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Is it possible to insert a field which is the number of times a block is inserted in a drawing?
Thanks
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Mike Williams Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 8:48 am
i don’t know if you can do this using fields, but you could find the information out using the BCOUNT command.
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hi Mike, Im using autocad 2009, when i move from model to paperspace with my drawing the curved lines becomes angular/zig zaggy, no I dea why, is there a command to reset the line back to normal?
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Mike Williams Reply:
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:54 pm
If you give the Regen command, it should clear it up. You can also set the system variable Viewres to be a higher number. The higher the number the smoother the arcs but the slower the drawing performance may be. You can also set this in the display tab of the Options dialog box under “display resolution”
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Mike ,
I need help with isometric drwings any lessons that will teach me how to draw step by step
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Mike Williams Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Hey Roberto,
I haven’t done any tips on isometric drafting. I’ll put that one on the list.
Mike
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hello, I know how to change the way SteeringWheels 2D to 3D, because 3D objects and management tool in 2D mode does not help. Thanks
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Hello again,
I tried posting this question a few days ago and actually thought I posted twice, but now that I have check back It may not have posted at all…so here goes agin…I cannot find a solution so I’m back trying to find an answer here.
Hello,
I have been using Auto-CAD for 12 years and have encountered a problem that has me baffled. This is in regards to 2d drafting only. Vertical and horizontal lines appear on screen to be correct. When angled lines are drawn they do not “appear” correct even though the properties and measurements check out. For instance when I intersect a 45 degree line perpendicular at the mid-point..the angles each side do not appear as 90 degrees even though all properties and measurements say they are…one angle, as it appears on the screen, seems slightly obtuse and the other slightly acute….even though they are 90s….something is wrong with the ucs or I screwed something up when using 3d orbit at some point..I’m losing my mind trying to resolve this….thanks for any help
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Mike Williams Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Ryan,
You are really making reach back in my memory bank for release 12. I’m assuming yuor circles look like ovals also. If i remember correctly, AutoCAD 12 has a screen calibration command. Since I think AutoCAD 12 was the 1st time they got rid of the “Main Menu” you will have to enter the “config” command or start autocad with the “-r” switch at the end of the command. Again, this is from memory. Let me know if it works.
Mike
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